“There is no way a head would be ripped off the body during a hanging. I’m sure they mutilated the bodies after they hanged them,” said Ahmed Mustafa, a 30-year-old student in the northern city of Mosul, accusing Iraq’s Shiite-led government of “sucking the blood of the people”.
Clearly conscious of the uproar over sectarian taunts during the illicitly filmed hanging of the ousted Sunni Arab president two weeks ago, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh insisted there was “no violation of procedure”.
Reference works on judicial killing do assert that decapitation is a possibility during hanging. But the admission that Barzan suffered such a fate sparked suspicion and anger, especially in Tikrit.
“People are resentful for the way that Barzan has been executed, the tearing of his head from his body,” said Abdullah al-Jubara, deputy governor of Salahaddin province around Tikrit.
Justice?
Firas Abdullah, 30, a civil servant, said the executions underlined how unfair the legal proceedings had been.“The court is illegal, it’s a toy in the hands of the Americans and Iran,” he said, in a reference to perceived links between Iraq’s Shiite majority and neighboring Shiite Iran.
Some Shiites too, however, were troubled by the hanging.
“They deserved to be hanged. Justice has taken its course,” said Issam Abdullah, a 27-year-old teacher in Safwan in the overwhelmingly Shiite south of Iraq.
“But the state has to explain what happened during Barzan’s execution, especially the ripping off of his head,” he added.
Source: Iraqis angry at accidental beheading - Conflict in Iraq - MSNBC.com
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